1. Technical Field
Embodiments of this disclosure relate to a cleaning device including multiple cleaning members to scrape off adhered substance on a surface of a cleaning target and an image forming apparatus employing the cleaning device to remove toner on a surface of an image bearer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Image forming apparatuses are used as, for example, copiers, printers, facsimile machines, and multi-functional devices having at least one of the foregoing capabilities. Such an image forming apparatus may include an image bearer to bear a toner image on a surface thereof and a cleaning device to remove adhered substance, e.g., toner particles from the surface of the image bearer.
For example, as illustrated in FIG. 20, an image forming apparatus includes a cleaning device 900 and an intermediate transfer belt 908 serving as an image bearer. In FIG. 20, the cleaning device 900 includes a first sub unit 901, a second sub unit 911, a third sub unit 921, and a sub-unit holder 950 to hold the first sub unit 901, the second sub unit 911, and the third sub unit 921, respectively. The first sub unit 901, the second sub unit 911, and the third sub unit 921 hold multiple members including, e.g., a cleaning brush roller 902, a cleaning brush roller 912, and a cleaning brush roller 922 with a sub-unit casing 906, a sub-unit casing 916, and a sub-unit casing 926, respectively.
The sub-unit holder 950 has a first support 951 to support the first sub unit 901 in such a manner that the first sub unit 901 is slidable in a longitudinal direction thereof (a direction perpendicular to a sheet surface on which FIG. 20 is printed). The sub-unit holder 950 also has a second support 952 to support the second sub unit 911 in such a manner that the second sub unit 911 is slidable in a longitudinal direction thereof and a third support 953 to support the third sub unit 921 in such a manner that the third sub unit 921 is slidable in a longitudinal direction thereof. With such sliding movement, the first sub unit 901, the second sub unit 911, and the third sub unit 921 are removably mountable relative to the sub-unit holder 950.
For such a configuration, when one of the cleaning brush roller 902, the cleaning brush roller 912, and the cleaning brush roller 922 comes to the end of product life, a user can replace only one of the multiple sub cleaning units including the cleaning brush roller having come to the end of product life with a new one and continue to use the other sub cleaning units remaining in the cleaning device 900. Such a configuration can reduce servicing cost of the cleaning device as compared with a configuration in which a single holder holds multiples components.